


An Explanation For Deification

by RunWithWolves



Series: 30 Days of Cupcake [5]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, within s2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-16
Updated: 2016-09-16
Packaged: 2018-08-15 10:21:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8052610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RunWithWolves/pseuds/RunWithWolves
Summary: Mattie is dead and Carmilla didn't come and Danny is dead. Laura is left to help Mel carry Danny's body across campus to the summer society house with the smell of a dead fish god burning in her nose.
She is Laura Hollis and enough people have died for her name and her cause.





	An Explanation For Deification

**Author's Note:**

> This is me letting go of my old s2 god!Laura theory for new s3 god!Laura theory  
> plus, i haven't written a lot of s2 stuff

It wasn’t fair. There was only a little bit of blood on her fingers. 

Laura took a step out of the battered remains of the door of the Dean’s house and tried to feel something as Theo’s smug face looked back at her. Chin lifted as he granted them safe passage to carry Danny’s body home. That little smile on his face as he watched them staggered outside for the first time under his permission should have lit something angry in her bones.

Smug looks always had before. 

They’d always had Laura running to find stages and platforms and broadcasts to let smug people know exactly what she thought of them and why they were wrong. But not today. 

Not today when there was a body on the floor and her fingers matched Theo’s. 

Somehow still so clean.

Because Theo hadn’t even wiped his fingers and they were still clean. He just stood there, watching as Laura and Mel wrestled with Danny’s body and twirling his knife. 

It was the knife that had the blood. 

Not his fingers.

Not Laura’s fingers. 

It was Danny’s back that had the blood. 

She wondered if Carmilla had bothered to wipe the blood from her mouth. Probably not. It had always been Laura doing that for her, trying to wipe it off when Carmilla was kidnapped in a dorm room or fresh off a massacre of gingerbread ladies. 

Even when they’d broken up and Carmilla had stumbled back with her face covered in red, Laura’s thumb had itched to wipe it up. It had looked sticky and itchy and today, as the cuts on her chest and forehead burned, blood matting around the wounds, she knew with certainty that sticky and itchy were accurate descriptors. 

Carmilla never wiped off the blood. It wasn’t hers to wipe.

Danny was covered in her own blood.

Mel adjusted her grip slightly and Danny slid forward to press against Laura’s torso. She was still warm and Laura could feel her through the sweat and grime forming into a hard shell across Laura’s skin . So warm. She had just been breathing and fighting and living. Laura’s arms were linked under Danny’s trying to hold the bulk of her weight without dropping her, keeping her close without touching her. 

Soon, Danny would turn cold. 

While Laura stayed warm. 

“Ready, Hollis?” Mel asked. 

Theo snorted, “We don’t have all day, ladies. Let’s get a move on.”

Laura nodded at Mel, hard. Determined to be ready even if she wasn’t sure how anyone could ever be ready for something like this, to feel something like this, to lift the lifeless corpse of their friend like this. But Danny had died and how could Laura be anything but ready?

Danny had died for her.

And it wasn’t fair. 

“On three,” Mel said. 

Laura nodded again. That was it. Three. Three seconds to get ready for the impossible. 

“One.”

Hardly enough.

“Two”

And yet more than she usually got.

“Three.”

One would think she’d be used to this by now.

Laura pulled upward, lifting Danny from the dust of the ground that she’d never be buried in. Summers believed in fire and songs, spirits being lifted to the sky. Laura could only hope that the sky could offer escape from the school that wouldn’t let them leave. Danny deserved to fly up. 

The campus was nothing like what she’d imagined a war zone to be. In pictures, they were always empty. Dirty desolate places with a couple of bodies and spent gunshells lying strewn across the ground. 

You couldn’t climb inside a picture. 

Instead. 

With Danny in her arms as Mel held Danny’s legs, Laura began walking backwards. They made the slow crawl to the Summer’s house with Zetas and villagers and anglerfish protesters looking on. Her muscles burned from carrying the much larger girl but it was nothing that Laura wasn’t already familiar with. 

She wondered if her father knew that 11 years of krav maga would be most useful for carrying corpses long distances. 

Thump. Thump. Thump. 

Each step was slow and calculated. Laura had no interest in tripping or in running and dropping her heavy cargo. Danny deserved so much more. Danny deserved weeping and somber audiences dressed in black to honour her name and a tombstone pointed to the sky to mark her place in the universe. Mark what she’d done. Who she’d been. Honour her legacy. 

Yet Laura’s eyes were dry. 

She just, felt, numb. 

The only feeling was her sock shifting in her shoe to make an uncomfortable ball under the arch of her foot. 

Mel’s voice cut into the continual thump thump thump, “You’re kind of freaking me out here Hollis. The way Lawrence spoke about you, it seemed as though you’re never quiet.”

“You’ll take care of her?” the only thing that mattered. 

“Of course,” Mel said, “she was a Summer.”

Yet more words slipped out, Laura had been told so many times that she never knew when to just be quiet and finally now, she believed them, “You were right.” The slipped off her tongue.

“About what?” Mel asked. 

“She was a martyr.” Laura said, “She’s dead. And for who? For what?” Laura threw Carmilla’s words back at herself, “For me. She died for me. A selfish, callow girl. And she’s the fool who trusted me. She took up my crusade that I started and because I asked her too and now she’s the one who's dead.”

“She made her own choi-”

“Don’t you dare try and absolve me,” Laura shouted, “Because I have spent all year trying to convince everyone that I was the hero. Myself that I was a hero. And just and right and true. That I knew what was right and what was wrong. And I was so, so blind.”

She tightened her grip on Danny’s shoulders, biting deep into fabric that bore a hole in the back far deeper than her fingers could pierce, “Danny is dead.” Laura repeated, “Mattie is dead. Carmilla lost everything, I’ve broken the school, and Kirsch is probably bleeding out somewhere. All I’ve managed to keep safe is Laf and Perry and you can’t deny that they’re both acting strange, like, PTSD level strange and I don’t even have time to try and deal with that. Even though it’s my fault. Because they were my friends. And I asked them to help me and they said yes. And I got JP, a 19th century consciousness, stuffed in an enemy’s body that he can’t control.”

Her voice cracked a little but she kept going, “And I can’t even keep them alive. Vordenberg is coming for us. He’s already said he’ll kill them and maybe Theo’s peace will hold but all anyone has ever told me is lies so it’s not like I can depend on that. And even if I can keep Laf and Perry and JP safe then he’s still going to kill Carmilla and-”

Carmilla. 

He’ll kill Carmilla. Laura couldn’t even bring herself to question it. If Vordenberg didn’t have her now, he’d have her eventually. 

Something inside her thumped in the approximation of an ache. Or as close as she could get when everything still felt so numb. On better days, she might have wondered what that meant. 

“Forget Karnstein,” Mel snapped, “she abandoned us.”

Laura shook her head and Mel huffed.

“Well, why the hell not?” Mel asked.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Laura said nothing. What answer could she give?

Carmilla had abandoned them and she left and she didn’t come to help them when Laura called her but Laura still cared. She could tell Mel of monsters and grey areas and change and betrayal. She could tell Mel that with every thump thump thump she understood Carmilla a little better when it came to heroes and villains and her place in it all. 

She could tell Mel that she wished she never understood it at all.   
Wished she’d understood sooner. 

Laura wished a lot of things. 

“Sometimes,” Laura dragged the words forward. Mel wasn’t her friend. Mel didn’t think she was a hero. Mel was just Mel.

Somehow, of all the people she hadn’t managed to kill, Mel was safe. Silas was a crazy place.

“Sometimes I wish I’d never come to this Silas.” There the words were, floating off her tongue like eight tiny silver arrows. But all Laura could see was Danny’s face. They’d closed her eyes, fingers gentle on her eyelids to push them shut one last time, but now they’d drifted open. A half-life flutter with no free hands to shut them again. 

If only it were that easy. 

Laura continued into the silence, “And yes, I know, the cost of that would have been Betty and Natalie and Elsie and Sarah Jane because the fish would have eaten them and they would have died but just,” if her arms weren’t so heavy, Laura would have flailed vaguely at the campus, “so many people died. Are dying. Because I wanted to save 3 lives. I decided it was worth it to try and save those girls and now we’re here and that was my choice and how is that fair?”

Mel paused then said, “4 lives. It was all this to save 4 lives.”

If only.

“3,” Laura said, ”Sarah Jane died anyway.”

Come to think of it, Laura hadn’t even started out with clean hands. 

There was nothing Mel could say to that. Nothing anyone could say that Laura hadn’t already said to herself a hundred times over the semester. Plowing forward with plans and rallies and heroics. 

Without Laura trying to play hero, no-one would have been dragged into this. Vordenberg wouldn’t own the school and four girls would have died and been enough and Laf and Kirsch would never have been dragged anywhere near the fish god. Perry wouldn’t be involved. Sure, Carmilla would still be drifting her way through her mother’s grasp but she’d also be very much alive and Laura couldn’t help but acknowledge that Carmilla was changing long before she met Laura and she would have found some other reason or person to break away from her mother for.

Mattie would be alive

Danny would be alive

No-one would be captured in a basement and supernatural species that were living just fine wouldn’t be tortured and rounded up. And her Dad always use to warn her to stay out of it, she’s a magnet for trouble and don’t stick your nose where it doesn’t belong Laura and stay safe Laura and she didn’t listen. Too busy relishing in her freedom to really think about his lessons.

She killed a god with her actions. 

Old and timeless and full of years and probably knowledge.

She killed so many. Humans and vampires with years ahead of them, and those were so many years of life and she’d just taken them away because she’d decided it was right. 

And she’d almost taken Carmilla’s. 

But for a fluke with a sword and a fish and Carmilla would be another life she’d taken with her plans.

Her arms tightened around Danny.

She wouldn’t of even gotten to hold Carmilla. Hear her last words. 

She wasn’t sure which was better. When Carmilla had died, she’d been numb too. 

And now so many people were dead and their bodies littered the quad and Laura had literally started a war because she was too busy thinking only for herself by thinking about others and yet out of all the dead she was still here while they bled out and died and fought.

She was still here when they were dead and it was her scheme and plan and mistake to begin with.

Her hands looked clean while they all had blood pouring out their backs and into their souls.

Her choices made others suffer. She made the plan and then demanded others pay the toll.

And how was that fair.

It was not.  
#  
Some of the other sisters met them halfway. The Summers brought a proper funeral board to carry Danny’s body in and Laura fought the impulse to cling to Danny’s body. She slowly lowered Danny down. Her hands slipped once, coming up to quickly adjust Danny’s braid back into some semblance of what it was intended to be. She slid the loose strands back into formation. 

Then, she let go.

The Summers gave her a nod as Mel shouldered the corner of the weight and then they were gone. Laura watched. She stared unmoving until even Danny’s bright red hair wasn’t visible on the horizon. 

Never see it again. What she wouldn’t give to see her friend again. 

She knew she should go back to the mansion. Really, it was all she had. The only place she could go. Instead, she looked around again. The smell of a rotting fish god filled her nose. 

All she had left was a shattered campus and a couple of friends who were either dead, dying or on their way out and it was all her fault. The guilt was pounding in the back of her head and curling in her gut and touching everything she looked at, except the grief. Everything had been overwhelmed by the grief and between the guilt and the grief, they made her think that she couldn’t lose anyone else. 

Enough had died in her name and in her crusade and she didn’t have much left but she had them. She owed it to them. Really, when she thought about it. They probably had families and friends and who was going to tell Danny’s family that their 22 year old daughter was dead defending a cause that didn’t matter and was lost anyway.

Maybe Carmilla was right about the monsters and grey areas and that the only reasons they fought were selfish and for those they loved. And maybe Danny was right with her assertions that they fought and died for the right cause or the right person and it all made sense.

But Laura didn’t care. Because trying to find what was right only made everything worse.

She took a shaky breath and lifted her chin, looking out over the pit. Lophii still stared up at her with dead eyes. What right did she have to kill a god?

So now it was about what was fair. Not about what was good or noble or just or heroic but just about what was fair. What was kind. 

It was not fair if anyone else has to die. To pay for her sins. 

Not fair if anyone else had to suffer. To further her goals.

Not fair if anyone else had to break. When she was broken anyway. 

Not fair that they were the ones bleeding to do her dirty work while she stood and watched them go. Hiding behind a computer screen or a vampire or a set of ideologies she didn’t know if she believed in any longer. She just didn’t know. 

The only thing Laura knew was that no-one else could be allowed to die. No else should have to suffer. No one else had to break. Not if she could stop it.

Danny was dead.

Mattie was dead. 

Carmilla was left. The killer who never wiped the blood of the dead off her face, wearing the consequences of her actions for all to see. 

Maybe that was fair. 

Laura’s hands were clean.

Carmilla was left and Laf was left and Perry was left and JP was left and Kirsch was probably still left and she’d managed to break them all and possibly ruin what was left of their lives but they were still left. Still here. 

It wasn’t fair that they suffered any longer for her.

Her turn. She’d take it all. Stop parsing it out for others to grab. 

Thump. Thump. Thump.

So Laura turned and walked. The smell of fish grew in her nostrils until the crater stood at her feet. She found the blood, foreign and purple where it should have been red. 

She drank. 

Pain coursed through her bones and Laura fell to her knees, squishing into the fish god’s former body. All of her muscles tensed and she could feel the roar of time ramming into her head and her veins and her skin. But all she could focus on was the drip of blood down her chin. 

The edges of her vision started to go white as power tingled in her fingers and a voice speaking in a language she didn’t know but could understand thrummed through her head. The god had a body once again. An old man to seek vengeance against for its death. A campus it called home to preserve. A gate to guard. 

“Save the campus,” she whispered.

It agreed. 

Because they were both angry and empty and their common goal was that this man who caused their pain and all who stood with him would burn and burn and die until there was nothing left of them.

She agreed.

Because it was fair that Laura would be broken and it was fair that everyone else would get a chance to live and it was fair that she lose herself to a monster beyond what even Carmilla had dreamed a person could be. 

She agreed.

Because she is Laura Hollis and enough people had died for her name and her cause.

Because love always had it sacrifices and for once, just once, when making her plans she put the cost on herself instead of everyone else. She would not ask for help again because twice someone had ended up dead when she called. Because she would burn and die and sacrifice herself for what she cared about. 

What she would care about if the god wasn’t burning in her head and veins.

Because if there was anything Danny and Carmilla taught her it’s that we sacrifice ourselves.

She agreed.

“Save the campus,” she whispered, “Save them all. Save… save Carm.”

And then her mouth was no longer her own.

Laura could just feel the blood. Carmilla had always left the blood on her own chin for all the world to see. 

This blood was purple. 

It coated her hands. Coated her feet. Coated her mouth. 

Which was only fair. 

Thump. Thump. Thump.

They walked back to the house.

**Author's Note:**

> Although intended to stand on its own, this also serves as a prequel to my story [ Behind Your Ancient Eyes](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6618592)
> 
> Cupcakes, your comments, kudos and [tumblr stop-ins](http://ariabauer.tumblr.com/) are what keep me going. And s3. people. humans. cupcakes. i just. gah. my brain. has so. many. ideas. THEY GAVE ME A MYSTERY AND MYTHS. I LOVE MYTHS. YOU ALL KNOW I LOVE MYTHS. 
> 
> This is the fifth story of '30 Days of Cupcake' where I'll be posting a unique Carmilla fanfic every weekday for 30 days. Stay stupendous. Aria.


End file.
